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Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #463

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463. To this I will append the following account:

I looked out in the direction of the seashore in the spiritual world, and I saw there a magnificent harbor. I went over and inspected it; and lo, I saw there seagoing vessels, great and small, and in them all kinds of merchandise, with boys and girls sitting on the rowers' benches and handing it out to any who wanted it. Moreover they said, "We are waiting to see our beautiful turtles which will soon rise up for us out of the sea." And suddenly I saw turtles, great and small, on whose shells and carapaces sat baby turtles, which were looking about at the surrounding islands.

The parent turtles had two heads, a large one covered with a shell like the carapace of their bodies, which gave them a reddish glow; and a small one, like the usual one for turtles, which they would withdraw into the foreparts of their bodies and also insert invisibly into the larger head. I kept my eyes, however, on the large, reddish head, and I saw that it had a face like that of a human being, and that it would speak with the boys and girls on the rowers' benches and lick their hands. The boys and girls for their part would pet them then and give them food and treats to eat, and also valuable gifts, such as silk usable for garments, sandarac wood 1 for tablets, purple for their ornamentation, and scarlet pigment as rouge.

[2] Seeing these things, I wished to know what they represented, as I knew that everything appearing in the world of spirits is a correspondent form and represents something spiritual descending from heaven.

Angels then spoke to me from heaven and said, "You yourself know what the harbor represents, and its vessels, and the boys and girls on the benches; but you do not know what the turtles represent."

So they said, "The turtles represent those members of the clergy there who divorce faith from charity and its good works totally, asserting to themselves that there is no conjunction whatever, but that the Holy Spirit enters into a person through faith in God the Father because of the merit of the Son, and purifies the person interiorly as far as to his native will. They make this will, then, into a kind of oval plane, and when the operation of the Holy Spirit approaches it, they say it goes around that plane on the left side and does not at all touch it. Thus the inner or higher part of a person's nature belongs to God, they say, while the outer or lower part belongs to the person, and thus nothing that a person does, whether good or evil, appears before God - not good because it is merit-seeking, and not evil because it is evil - since if these were to appear before God, they would both cause the person to perish.

"Moreover," they said, "because this is the case, a person is permitted to will, think, say and do whatever he pleases, provided he guards himself against the world."

[3] I asked whether they also declare that a person is permitted to think about God as being not omnipresent and not omniscient.

They said from heaven that this, too, is permitted them, because in the case of a person who has once been purified and thus justified, God does not look at anything pertaining to his thought or will, and yet in the inner recess or higher region of his mind or nature, he still retains the faith that he had previously received in its action upon him, and that the action can sometimes return without the person's knowing.

"This," the angels said, "is what the small head represents, which the turtles draw into the foreparts of their bodies and hide, and which they also insert in the large head when they speak with laymen. For they do not speak with them out of the small head, but out of the large one, which out front appears as though endowed with a human face. They speak with them from the Word about love, charity, good works, the Ten Commandments, and repentance, and they take from the Word almost everything that is found there on these subjects. But then they insert the small head into the large one, and this causes them to interpret within themselves that none of these things are to be done for God's sake, or for the sake of heaven and salvation, but only for the sake of the public good and personal good. Yet because they speak about these things from the Word, especially about the gospel, the operation of the Holy Spirit, and salvation, doing so agreeably and elegantly, therefore they appear to their listeners as beautiful human beings and wiser than any others in the entire world. That is why you saw the boys and girls sitting on the rowers' benches give them treats to eat and valuable gifts.

[4] "These, then, are the people you saw represented as turtles. In your world one can tell them apart from others to some small extent only by the fact that they believe themselves to be wiser than any others, and ridicule them, especially their colleagues, who they say are not as wise as themselves, and whom they scorn. They carry about with them a particular little seal on their clothing, to distinguish themselves from others."

[5] One of those speaking with me said, "I will not tell you their opinion regarding all the other tenets of faith, as for example, regarding election, free will, baptism, and Holy Supper, which are the kind of things they do not make public. But we in heaven know.

"However, because they are of such a character in the world, and because after death no one is permitted to speak otherwise than as he thinks, therefore - because they can speak then only in accord with the insanities of their thoughts - they are regarded as insane and expelled from one society after another, and at last are conveyed down into the bottomless pit and become carnal spirits having the appearance of mummies. For a callus was produced on the interiors of their minds, because in the world they had also interposed a wall.

"There is a hellish society of them bordering on a hellish society of Machiavellians, and they sometimes pass from the one into the other and call themselves comrades; but then they leave because of the difference between them, as they have among them some religion relating to faith in action, whereas among Machiavellians there is none."

[6] After I saw them expelled from one society after another and gathered together to be cast down, I saw a ship with seven sails flying in the air, and in it officers and sailors dressed in purple clothing, with magnificent laurel wreaths on their heads, and crying, "Look, we are now in heaven! We are professors robed in purple, and laureates greater than all others, because we are the foremost of the wise out of all the clergy in Europe."

I wondered what this was, and I was told that the figures were depictions of the conceit and the mental concepts termed fantasies emanating from the people who had appeared before as turtles, and who now, having been expelled from one society after another, appeared as insane and were gathered into a single group, standing together in one place.

At that I desired to speak with them, and I went over to the place where they were standing, and greeting them, said, "You are people who have divorced people's internals from their externals, and divorced the operation of the Holy Spirit as though in faith from its concomitant operation with a person as though apart from faith, thus divorcing God from man. Have you not by the same token removed not only charity and its works from faith, as many other learned of the clergy do, but also faith itself as regards its manifestation by a person in the sight of God?

"But if you please, do you wish me to speak to you on this subject in accord with reason, or in accord with the Holy Scripture?"

[7] They told me to speak first from reason, and so I spoke saying, "How can the internal and the external in a person be divorced? Who does not see, or cannot see, as a matter of common sense that a person's interiors all extend and are continued into the exteriors, and even into his outmosts, in order to produce their effects and accomplish their operations? Do the internals not exist for the sake of the externals, so as to terminate in them and subsist in them, and thus abide, much like a column upon its pedestal? Can you not see that if the continuity and thus conjunction did not exist, the outmost elements would disintegrate and drift away like bubbles in the air? Who can deny that there are millions of interior operations of God in people, of which a person knows nothing? And what help would it be for him to be aware of them, provided he is cognizant of the outmost ones, in which he, with his thought and will, act together with God?

[8] "But I will illustrate this with an example. Is a person aware of the inner operations of his speech, such as how the lungs draw in air and fill their alveoli, bronchia, and lobes with it? Or how they expel air into the trachea and there turn it into sound? Or how the sound is modified in the glottis with the aid of the larynx, and how the tongue then articulates it and the lips complete the articulation so that it becomes speech? All of these interior operations, of which the person knows nothing - do they not take place for the sake of the outmost effect, that the person be able to speak? Take away or divorce one of those internal processes from its continuity with the outmost effects - would a person be able to speak any more than a wooden post?

[9] "Take another example. A person's two hands are his terminal members. Do not the interior elements that extend into it come from the head through the neck, and then through the breast, shoulders, arms and forearms? And do these not involve countless muscular tissues, countless arrays of motor fibers, countless bundles of nerves and blood vessels, and a number of articulations of bones with their membranes and ligaments? Is a person at all aware of these? And yet his hands operate as a result of them. Suppose these inner processes took a wrong turn at the wrist and did not continue into the hands? Would the hands not fall off the forearms and decay like some inanimate object plucked away? In fact, if you are willing to believe it, it would be the same as with the body if the person were beheaded.

"It would be the altogether the same with a person's thought and will if the Divine operation should cease before reaching them and not flow into them.

"So much in accord with reason.

[10] "Now if you are willing to hear it, these arguments accord with the Holy Scripture as well. Does the Lord not say,

Abide in Me, and I in you... I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5)

"Are not the fruits good works, which the Lord does through a person, and which a person does as though of himself?

"Does the Lord not also say that He stands at the door and knocks, and that if anyone opens the door, He will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Him (Revelation 3:20)?

"Does the Lord not give minas and talents, that a person may do business with them and make a profit, and that in the measure of the person's profit He gives eternal life (Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 19:13-26)? Moreover, that He rewards everyone in accordance with the person's labor in His vineyard (Matthew 20:1-17)?

"But these are just a few proofs. We could fill pages with citations from the Word to the effect that a person should be like a tree and produce fruits, that he should keep the commandments, love God and the neighbor, and more. But I know that it is not possible for your intellectual acumen to have any real common ground with passages from the Word. Even though you quote them, still your ideas pervert them. Nor can you do otherwise, because you take away from a person everything having to do with God as regards any communication and so conjunction. What remains then but only all the rituals of worship?"

[11] After that I saw these people in the light of heaven, which disclosed and exposed the character of each one, and they did not appear then as before, in a ship in the air, as though in heaven. Nor were there any purple-robed figures in it, or heads wreathed with laurel. I saw them instead in a sandy area, in ragged clothing, and girded about their loins with nets, like those used by fishermen, through which their nakedness was visible. And they were then conveyed down into the previously mentioned society bordering on the hellish society of Machiavellians.

Footnotes:

1. Literally, "thyine wood." See Revelation 18:12

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #461

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461. The third experience 1 .

Once when I was in the spirit I travelled deep into the southern region in the spiritual world, and came into a park there; and I saw that this one was better than the others I had so far visited. The reason was that a garden means intelligence; and it is to the south that all are sent who are especially intelligent. It was this that was meant by the Garden of Eden, where Adam lived with his wife; so their being driven out implies that they were deprived of intelligence, and thus also of uprightness of life. As I was walking in this southern park I noticed some people sitting under a laurel-bush eating figs. I went up to them and asked them to give me some figs. They did so, and at once the figs in my hand turned into grapes. I was surprised by this, but an angelic spirit standing next to me said: 'The figs in your hand turned into grapes, because the meaning of figs by their correspondence is the kinds of good of charity and hence of faith in the natural or external man, and grape means the kinds of good of charity and hence of faith in the spiritual or internal man. As you love what is spiritual, so this happened to you. For in our world everything happens and comes into existence, and also undergoes change, in accordance with correspondences.'

[2] I was at once struck with a keen desire to know how a person can do good coming from God, and yet do it exactly as if of himself. So I asked those who were eating figs how they understood the point. They said that they could only understand this as meaning that God performs this inwardly in a person while he is unaware of it. For if he were conscious of it, and did it in that state, he would do only apparent good, which is inwardly evil. 'Everything,' they said, 'which comes from man comes from his self (proprium), and this is evil from birth. How then can good coming from God and evil coming from man be linked, and so jointly proceed to action? A person's self in matters of salvation is constantly seeking merit; and in so far as he does so, he takes away from the Lord His merit, which is the height of injustice and impiety. In short, if the good which God performs in a person were to flow into his willing and thence into his doing, that good would be utterly defiled and profaned, something God never permits. A person can of course think that the good he does comes from God, and call it God's good done by his means; still we do not understand that it is good.'

[3] Then I disclosed what I was thinking and said: 'You do not understand because your thinking is based upon appearances, and this sort of thinking if supported by argument is fallacy. The appearance and hence the fallacy you are involved in is because you believe that everything a person wills and thinks, and so does and says, is in him and consequently comes from him. Yet in fact nothing of this is in him, except the condition of receiving what flows in. Man is not life in himself, but he is an instrument for receiving life. The Lord is life in Himself, as He also says in John:

As the Father has life in Himself, so He granted to the Son to have life in Himself, John 5:26; and elsewhere, for instance John 11:25; 14:6, 19.

[4] 'There are two things which produce life, love and wisdom, or, what is the same, the good of love and the truth of wisdom. These flow in from God, and are received by a person as if they were his own; and because they are felt like this, they also come from a person as if they were his. The Lord grants that they are felt like this by a person, so that what flows in affects him, and so by being accepted remains with him. But because all evil also flows in, not from God, but from hell, and accepting this gives pleasure, man being by birth such an instrument, for this reason only so much good can be accepted from God as there is evil taken away by the person as if by himself, which is achieved by repentance together with faith in the Lord.

[5] 'It can be plainly seen from a consideration of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch that love and wisdom, charity and faith, or to use a more general expression, the good of love and charity, and the truth of wisdom and faith, flow into a person; and that what flows in appears in a person as if it were entirely his own, and it proceeds from him as if it were his own. All the sensations produced in the organs of those senses come from an external source and are felt in the organs concerned. It is the same with the organs of the internal senses, the only difference being that these are affected by spiritual things, which are undetectable, flowing in, whereas the external senses are affected by natural things, which are detectable. In short, man is an instrument for the reception of life from God; it follows that he receives good to the extent that he desists from evil. Everyone is granted by the Lord the potentiality of desisting from evil, because he is granted the power to will and to have understanding; and whatever a person does from his will in accordance with his understanding, or what is the same thing, from his freedom to will in accordance with the power of reason in his understanding, is permanent. By this means the Lord brings a person into a state of being linked with Himself, and in this state He reforms, regenerates and saves him.

[6] 'The life which flows in is life coming forth from the Lord; this life is also called the Spirit of God, and in the Word the Holy Spirit, and of this it is said that it enlightens and quickens, in fact that it works on him. But this life varies and is modified depending on the organisation brought about by love. You can also know that all the good of love and charity, and all the truth of wisdom and faith flow in and are not actually in the person, if you reflect that when anyone thinks that man has such a capability from creation, he must inevitably think that God poured Himself into man, so that people are partially gods. Yet those who think this as a result of firm belief become devils, and in our world stink like corpses.

[7] 'Moreover, what is human action but a mind acting? What the mind wills and thinks, it does and speaks by means of its instrument, the body. When therefore the mind is guided by the Lord, so is its action and speech. Action and speech are guided by the Lord, when He is believed in. If this were not so, tell me if you can, why did the Lord in thousands of places in His Word order man to love his neighbour, perform the good deeds of charity, to produce fruit like a tree and keep His commandments, and to do both one and the other in order to be saved? Again, why did He say that a person would be judged according to his deeds or what he had done, those whose deeds were good going to heaven and life, those whose deeds were wicked going to hell and death? How could the Lord have said such things, if everything coming from a person was done to acquire merit and therefore wicked? You ought therefore to know that if the mind is charity, so too is action; but if the mind is faith alone, and this too is faith separated from spiritual charity, action also is that faith.'

[8] On hearing this those who were sitting under the laurel said: 'We grasp that you have spoken fairly, but still we do not grasp the point.' 'You grasp,' I answered them, 'that I have spoken fairly by means of the general perception which all people enjoy as the result of the light which flows in from heaven when they hear something true. Your failure to grasp the point is due to your own personal perception, which everyone has as a result of light flowing in from the world. In the case of the wise those two kinds of perception, internal and external, or spiritual and natural, act as one. You too can make them act as one, if you look to the Lord and put away evils.' Since they understood this, I took some shoots off a vine and held them out to them saying, 'Do you think this is from me or from the Lord?' They said it was from the Lord through me; and at once the shoots in their hands put forth grapes.

When I left, I saw a table of cedar-wood, on which was a book, under a flourishing olive-tree with a vine wound about its trunk. When I looked, I saw to my surprise that the book was the one written through me called ARCANA CAELESTIA 2 . I said that that book contained a full demonstration that man is an instrument for the reception of life, and was not himself life; and that life could not be created and so by being created be in man, any more than light could be created in the eye.

Footnotes:

1. This passage is based upon

2. Or 'The secrets of heaven'.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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